Dubai to host World Expo 2020

This is exciting news for Dubai, since there's been a heavy push to win this bid for the past year or so. Personally, I thought Dubai's win was in the bag, based on the amount of promotion and branding across the city compared to the other bidding cities.

The theme for the 2020 World Expo is "Connecting Minds, Creating the Future",

Dubai has a long history of facilitating connections and pioneering new ideas and Dubai Expo 2020 would be no different, with a predicted 70 per cent of the expected 25 million visitors originating from outside the host nation, making it the most international event in the history of Expo.

It would therefore provide a unique platform for the global community to come together and explore creative and pioneering solutions to the three subthemes which have been identified as key drivers of global development:

Sustainability - lasting sources of energy and water

Mobility - smart systems of logistics and transportation

Opportunity - new paths to economic development

The focus will be on exploring their interdependencies and identifying potential partnerships, ultimately resulting in a legacy of innovation.

I am quite keen on the sustainability part and really hope Dubai will set an example and lead the way in this region. This is a great opportunity for Dubai to stand for more than just grandiose developments, hi-rise towers and world records.

If Dubai wins, we will spend the next seven years thinking and shaping its identity in a completely new way than the past. This is not about appropriating neo-urban slogans and reintroducing a post-crisis Dubai — it will be unambitious to be that reductive in scope. This is about finding a new vocabulary to define Dubai. A lexicon that captures not what it was and is, but what it has not yet been — a text for the yet unintended.

Seven years of textual discovery is what will happen. Substantive inquiry into what a city that wants it all — and paradoxically at times appears to already have it all — should need at all.